In a staggering case of affirmative action gone wild, officials in a major U.S. city are actually recruiting minorities to be lifeguards at public pools even if they’re not good swimmers. It’s all in the name of diversity.

You can’t make this stuff up. It’s a real-life story out of Phoenix, the capitol of Arizona and the nation’s sixth-largest city. It has more than 1.4 million residents and, among its official mottos is “value and respect” of diversity. This means “more than gender and race,” according to the city’s official website. It also encompasses “uniqueness and individuality” and embracing differences. “We put this belief into action to provide effective services to our diverse community.”

Evidently officials are willing to compromise those “effective services” at 29 public swimming pools spread throughout the city. To diversify the lifeguard force, Phoenix will spend thousands of dollars to recruit minorities even if they’re not strong swimmers, according to an official quoted in a news report. Blacks, Latinos and Asians who may not necessarily qualify can still get hired, says the city official who adds that “we will work with you in your swimming abilities.”...

About 50 men in their 90s are to stand trial for their service as guards in the Auschwitz Nazi death camp during World War II.

The WAZ German news website reported that legal proceedings will be opened against the suspects who will be charged with accessory to murder, [...]

The chief prosecutor, Kurt Schrimm, told WAZ that the 50 guards were recruited from around Germany but didn't reveal their current whereabouts.

He noted that some of them may have escaped to South America with the aid of the Catholic Church.

According to WAZ, COINS has located since its founding in 1958 over 7,000 Nazi war criminals.

Pope Pius, who led the Church at the time, was a serious problem during WW2, since he was a lowlife, and clearly didn't place a very high value on innocent lives. That's why some of those filthy sickos managed to flee to a socialist haven like South America. I hope all nazis who could be captured and brought back to Europe for trial were.

The important lesson here is that no matter how old they are, the nazi war criminals still have to face consequences.

Three members of the French feminist group FEMEN burned an Islamic flag this week outside the Grand Mosque of Paris. The flag-burning was carried out as a protest of oppression of women in the Muslim world.

A Tunisian activist set fire to the flag, on which was written the declaration of Islamic faith, “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His messenger.”

She and two other Arab women who took part in the flag-burning were shirtless during the event. The women wrote slogans on their torsos including “Arab women against Islamism” and “Freedom.”

Five women have staged a topless protest in front of an Islamic cultural centre and mosque in Brussels.

The Femen demonstration was in support of a woman in Tunisia called Amina, who posted pictures on the internet of her naked body bearing anti-Islamic slogans.

As a result, one cleric called for her to be killed. Wahabi Salafi preacher Almi Adel, who heads the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, said the 19-year-old should be stoned to death.

In other words, imagine the unthinkable: the achievement “gap” is just an artifact of IQ distribution.

Do I hope this hypothetical study would result in this finding? No. I would, in fact, be pleased to learn that poor, high IQ kids faded due to lack of development and support in their schools, drowning in low ability kids, and that rich kids with low IQs do substantially better than poor kids with the same IQs. That’s a problem we could fix. But I worry that for the most part, such a study would end with the hypothetical results I propose, because based on available data, it seems the most likely finding.

But again, all I’m asking here is that you imagine this outcome. Here’s what I’m trying to get at: what conclusions would we be required to accept, however reluctantly?

If IQ is the root cause of the achievement gap, the vast majority of those low income children with vocabulary deficits have cognitive abilities much lower than average. It would also follow that blacks and Hispanics, on average, have cognitive abilities lower than whites and Asians. Coupling those facts with previous research, it would mean the achievement gap can’t be closed with the tools we have at this time.

It would not follow that all poor kids are unintelligent, that “blacks/Hispanics aren’t as smart as whites/Asians”, or that IQ is genetically linked to race.

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE, THEN A GOOD PLACE TO START IS... REALITY.

REALITY TELLS US THAT RACIAL/GENETIC GROUPS ARE NOT ALL THE SAME.

SO, WE SHOULDN'T TREAT ALL RACIAL GROUPS AS THE SAME.

ALL INDIVIDUALS ARE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW AND EACH PERSON IS UNIQUE AND A SANCTIFIED WHOLE.

SO, NO INDIVIDUAL SHOULD BE TREATED MORE POSITIVELY OR MORE NEGATIVELY BECAUSE THEY BELONG TO A PARTICULAR RACIAL/ETHNIC GROUP.

PLENTY OF HI-IQ JEWS AND ASIANS SUPPORTED MARXISM - PROOF THAT HI-IQ IS NOT THE BE-ALL/END-ALL, NOR THE KEY TO UTOPIA.

AND SOCIETIES AND CULTURES THRIVE BEST WITH ALL INDIVIDUALS - OF VARYING TALENTS AND ABILITIES - CONTRIBUTING IN ALL KINDS OF WAY, MANY OR MOST OF WHICH DO NOT REQUIRE HI-IQ: THE ARTS AND SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT AND MANUFACTURING AND SO ON.

WE NEED ALL TYPES OF PEOPLE CONTRIBUTING IN ALL TYPES OF DIFFERENT WAYS.

SO THE FACT THAT CERTAIN RACIAL GROUPS ARE LESS INTELLIGENT ON THE WHOLE MUSTN'T BE AN EXCUSE FOR TREATING THAT GROUP DIFFERENTLY.

ASIANS AND JEWS AS GROUPS SHOULD NOT BE REWARDED FOR THE GROUP'S HI IQ AVERAGE. AND RACIAL GROUPS THAT DO MORE POORLY ON AVERAGE SHOULD NOT BE PUNISHED AS A GROUP - OR REWARDED.INDIVIDUAL ASIANS AND INDIVIDUAL JEWS AND INDIVIDUAL BLACKS AND INDIVIDUAL LATINOS SHOULD EACH BE REWARDED AND/OR PUNISHED ON THE BASIS OF THEIR INDIVIDUAL MERITS.

AND WE SHOULD SEE TO IT THAT GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS THAT SEEK TO REWARD CERTAIN GROUPS OR PUNISH CERTAIN GROUPS ARE ENDED.

NO MATTER THEIR HIGH MORAL MOTIVATIONS AND INTENTIONS

THEY ARE A WASTE OF MONEY.

THEY CAN'T ACHIEVE THEIR STATED GOALS.

AND THEY ARE RACIST: THEY PERPETUATE TREATING INDIVIDUALS AS MEMBERS OF A RACIAL GROUP.

A MORAL CODE WHICH SEEKS TO HAVE GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY TREAT INDIVIDUALS AS INDIVIDUALS CAN NEVER BE CALLED RACIST.POLICIES AND PROGRAMS THAT SEEK TO TREAT INDIVIDUALS AS INDIVIDUALS CAN NEVER BE CALLED RACIST.

Friday, April 05, 2013

American leftist Jewish organizations are requesting that a Long Island, New York synagogue cancel a speech to be given by a blogger with anti-Muslim views, The Jewish Daily Forward reported Thursday

According to the Forward, In an email sent out to Jewish Voice for Peace members on April 3, the organization asked members to contact the Great Neck Synagogue and request that the April 14 speech to be given by Pamela Geller be cancelled. [...]

Geller, in response to the backlash against her upcoming event, allegedly criticized the leftist groups as insufficiently Jewish.

“Jewish history is plagued with these quislings, who are willing tools serving as the public face for supremacists and annihilationists,” she wrote in an email to the Forward. “The left uses these Jews to defame and destroy a Jew who is truly standing up for Israel and for the principles of freedom and human rights that the Jewish State represents. It’s inexcusable.”

[I'M ADDING COMMENTS IN BRACKETS JUST IN CASE ANYONE ISN'T CLEAR WHO AVI MEANS WHEN HE WRITES "they". EDITOR] I'm betting they [THE LEFTISTS, NOT THE ORTHODOX JEWS OF THE GNS. ED.] don't even pray at that synagogue either. And if they [THE LEFTISTS PROTESTING, AGAIN. ED.] were invited to a debate, they'd probably refuse. They're [THE ANTI-GELLER LEFTISTS. ED.] very poor representatives of the Jewish community.I ENTIRELY AGREE WITH AVI: THOSE PROTESTING GELLER ARE DISGUSTING KAPO-LIKE DHIMMI JEWS - RELIAPUNDIT/EDITOR.

One of the most offensive things Shas did when the Oslo agreements were signed was to sell out the country even further for the sake of a kashrut law that wasn't even properly enforced, all explained by a writer for Haaretz (via the LA Jewish Journal):

In April 1994, Shas made a deal with the Labor Party, which led the government at the time, and together the two pushed through the "Kashrut Law" in the dead of night. It isn't that Labor thought the law was a good idea. But its leaders liked the idea of being in opposition even less, and quailed before the usual Haredi threat - pass the law or they'd bring down the government.

One of the central articles in the Kashrut Law states that Israel will only import kosher meat. Israel's importers subsequently send hundreds of kashrut inspectors - with their families in tow - to slaughterhouses and processing plants around the world.

Their job: to enforce the mitzvah of kosher slaughter.

In parallel with enacting the law, the Knesset agreed to let Palestinian meat importers import halal (the Islamic version of kosher) meat through Israeli ports. That meat is of course designated for the Palestinian Authority area. But does it actually go there?

In a recent report, the state comptroller wrote that the cost to Palestinian importers of importing refrigerated fresh meat is about 10% of the cost to their Israeli counterparts. What is the reason for that gigantic difference? Two reasons, says the comptroller: the high cost of kosher slaughter abroad, and a 190% tax Israel imposes on imported fresh meat. No such tax is applied to meat imported into the Palestinian Authority.

For instance, a Palestinian importer pays $1.55 per kilo of fresh fillet, while the Israeli importer pays $11.80 for the same cut of meat: 7.6 times more.

The state comptroller translated these eye-popping numbers into enlightening statistics. Out of 35,000 tons of fresh meat unloaded at Israel's ports during 2007 to 2009 for sale in the Palestinian Authority, only 15,600 tons reached their stated destinations. No less than 56% of the amount, or 19,400 tons, "disappeared."

One can guess where it went. "There is concern that the meat was smuggled into Israel and sold to the public without veterinary supervision," State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss wrote. The state loses tax income and people who keep kosher may be unwittingly consuming unkosher meat, Lindenstrauss added.

Stepping up supervision would reduce the scope of smuggling, but not eradicate it. When the temptation is that great, no army of inspectors could stop it entirely. The smuggling methods just get cleverer.

The meat passes from truck to truck en route, drivers change, shipment certificates designating destinations are faked and the meat for Palestinians finds its way to butcher shops in Israel. The recipients stick on labels attesting that the meat is as kosher as kosher can be. Sometimes they fake the labels, sometimes the smugglers buy perfectly authentic kashrut certificates from kashrut inspectors gone bad. In any case this illicitly kosherized meat finds its way to butcher shops throughout the land.

The price of the law pushed through by Shas is being paid by consumers of kosher meat, not least in the Haredi community that Shas serves. On the grounds of their strict adherence to the laws of kashrut, Haredim tend not to buy frozen imported meat: They insist on fresh meat slaughtered locally, or imported fresh meat. But they cannot be sure that the meat they bought really is kosher. Usually the butcher himself doesn't even know.

Some consumers in the US and Europe are rightly concerned about food made under halal methods that isn't labeled so on the wrappings. This shows they're not alone: thanks to Shas and the Labor party, the kashrut industry may have been harmed for many years and people may have unwittingly consumed meat and other products without actual kashrut supervision. Unlike kosher, the halal practice has less focus on health benefits, one more reason why what's halal isn't considered kosher.

So here we have another reason to look down on Shas in disgrace and shame, and feel fortunate for now that they're in the opposition. They're concerned about kashrut but not about innocent human lives in danger from bullets, knives and bombs? I have no respect for that blatant political party, and hope that one day, they'll be voted out of the Knesset for good.

The Chinese have become the single biggest source of global tourism income after spending $102bn (£67bn; 79bn euros) while travelling abroad in 2012. The total is 40% higher than the year before, and puts them well above the next two highest-spending countries, Germany and the US. The figures come from the UN World Tourism Organisation. It says higher incomes, looser travel restrictions and a strengthening currency are behind the surge. Other emerging market countries saw their tourism numbers jump, too. The Russian Federation saw spending rise by 32% to $43bn, putting it in fifth place in the ranking of international tourism spending, up from seventh.

Most preposterous of all to this former prosecutor is the military’s silly assertion that awarding the Purple Heart to Hasan’s victims would enable Hasan’s lawyers to claim prejudice. Much of what prosecutors do in litigation involves responding to frivolous defense motions – that’s the job. Claims that defense lawyers now have no real chance of succeeding routinely get posited anyway, for two reasons: (a) Defense counsel seed the appellate record with any conceivable reason to get a conviction overturned (if counsel fails to raise a matter, it is deemed waived, so the lawyer’s incentive is to raise everything); and (b) defense counsel realize that, if the defendant is convicted, they will inevitably be accused of having performed incompetently – by making lots of motions, even weak ones, counsel help the reviewing court conclude that counsel provided zealous defense.

If I were a government lawyer, I’d be licking my chops to respond to defense lawyers who were claiming prejudice based on awarding Purple Hearts to the victims. Not only are the victims extraordinarily sympathetic—and some of them performed heroically. Remember that we’re talking here about a “Purple Hearts are prejudicial” claim being advanced by lawyers who themselves have already announced that Hasan wanted to plead guilty. Many litigation arguments are stressful. For a prosecutor, that one would be fun.

It would be bad enough for the defense lawyers blatantly representing that savage to claim prejudice, since that would be denigrating the victims. But for the military themselves to stoop so low is nauseating. The victims are right to file suit against the outfit that's turned its back on them for the sake of political correctness.

It looks like the outrage over the police call to ban women from praying kaddish at the Western Wall has born fruit:

The announcement led to significant political opposition to the move however, and following consultations between MK Aliza Lavie, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, Rabbi of the Wall Shmuel Rabinowitz, the Jerusalem police and the Women of the Wall on Thursday, it was agreed that the prohibition on women saying Kaddish would not be enforced.

A spokesman for the Jerusalem District Police could not confirm the agreement, telling The Jerusalem Post that the matter was in the hands of Rabinowitz and that if he had agreed to a compromise deal with the concerned parties, the agreement would be conveyed to the Ministry of Justice and subsequently back to the police.

Rabbi Rabinowitz confirmed to the Post that an agreement had indeed been reached, according to which women will not be arrested for saying Kaddish at the Western Wall plaza. [...]

Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, who has been designated by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to form a compromise on the matter, issued a statement to the press on Thursday “expressing his shock” at the recent directive from the police banning women from saying Kaddish.

According to the statement, Sharansky met with Rabinowitz on Thursday, who assured him that “contrary to the letter, no woman would be arrested for reciting Kaddish at the Western Wall.”

MK Aliza Lavie of Yesh Atid was also involved in reaching an agreement with Rabinowitz that the ban on women saying the prayers would not be enforced and that no-one will be arrested for doing so.

“This is a specific solution for a complex problem which needs to be resolved as soon as possible,” said Lavie, adding that she has been working on the issue since being elected to the Knesset in the January elections.

She emphasized that a solution can only be reached with mutual understanding and dialogue” and said that the Western Wall must not turn into a permanent source of conflict.

Hoffman blamed Rabinowitz for the prohibition on women saying Kaddish, saying it was “brought on solely by the hegemony and short-sightedness of Rabbi Rabinowitz.”

As I've noted before, there is potential irony involved: they may not be all that different from one another - has Rabinowitz ever protested the Wakf's abuse of the Temple Mount? Not to my knowledge.

It's good that there was backlash, because what the police intended could affect even Orthodox women. I'd say the chief of police himself owes an apology for all the trouble he's caused. No matter what I think of Reform Judaism, I don't consider prayer service in itself a problem, and it's all part of free speech, plus freedom of religion. Rabinowitz too owes an apology for delegitimizing other sects of Judaism, which is quite contrary to what Judaism is all about.

Sharansky is in the final stages of drafting recommendations for a compromise to resolve growing tensions over prayer at the wall. The recommendations, his office said, are meant to ensure “that every Jew in the world can pray in the manner that they are accustomed to at Judaism’s most important national and religious site.”

That would include my grandmothers, if they were still alive today and adhered to Conservative Judaism. And, the Wash. Post tells that:

Elana Sztokman, executive director of the New York-based Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, said “it is not up to the state of Israel, the police, or the (Wall’s) administrator,” to dictate when women can say the Kaddish.

“The idea that the police are being recruited to incarcerate women for failing to comply with the particularly radical opinion of the ultra-Orthodox rabbi ... is a frightening invasion of fanatic religious opinions into women’s real lives,” she said.

Absolutely. Rabinowitz is not fit for his job, and would do well to resign his position, or, it should be taken away from him. The Western Wall is supposed to be public property, not Haredi.

Women of the Wall plans to conclude its Rosh Chodesh prayer service on April 11, which is a few days before Israel’s Independence Day, by singing HaTikvah at the Kotel.

“This is a way on erev Yom Hatzmaut [the eve of Independence Day] to protest that women are not allowed to sing Hatikvah at the Wall,” Hoffman said.

According to Hoffman, women have not spoken or sung the national anthem at the swearing in of new soldiers at the Kotel, which is a national historical site as well as a religious one, since the early 1990s. “There has been a tacit agreement that women [commanders] will not swear in their own soldiers at the Wall and women will not sing Hatikvah. I have gone to swearing in of soldiers regularly and have never seen a woman sing. The IDF’s singing troupe, which has women in it, manages not to send them” to swearing in ceremonies, she said.

If this is correct, that too is ludicrous and offensive. It's not something religious per se, and it's just as much an insult to free speech as the other stupid things the police were doing.

PARIS (AP) — A French court has convicted Air France of discrimination for removing a Palestinian activist from a plane as she traveled to Israel to attend a rally.

Patrick Baudouin says his client, Horia Ankour, was en route last April from France to attend a "Welcome to Palestine" rally. Baudouin said Air France asked Ankour whether she was Israeli or Jewish, then ordered her off the plane after she acknowledged she was neither.

He said the court on Thursday found Air France guilty of discrimination, and ordered it to pay 13,000 euros ($16,700) in fines, damages and interest.

Air France lawyer Fabrice Pradon said the airline would appeal. He said the Israelis had told Air France she would not be allowed in and there was no intention to harm her.

Air France did the right thing to push the ejector seat button, and the court is only making things worse by ruling in her favor. The company should definitely appeal.

The Italian authorities have seized assets worth 1.3bn euros ($1.7bn: £1.1bn) from a Sicilian businessman involved in renewable energy.
Investigators allege that Vito Nicastri was a front man for the Mafia, or Cosa Nostra, investing illegal earnings in his business empire.
The anti-mafia agency said in a statement it was the biggest ever seizure of mafia-linked assets.
Mr Nicastri has been confined to his home town as investigations continue.
The 57-year-old's assets include 43 wind and solar energy companies and 98 properties.
So heavily was Mr Nicastri involved in renewable energy, Italian media dubbed him the "Lord of the Wind".

To me, the data should drive our decision making. So I know, I’m not afraid of people having guns who are law abiding citizens. In the analysis of gun murders and shootings in my city, I could only find one in the entire time I’ve been mayor – and unfortunately there have been hundreds and hundreds – where a person who was involved in a shooting where they had their gun legally, where they legally acquired their gun. The guns that are causing carnage in our cities, my city and our country, every single year are acquired illegally.

THIS IS WHY TOUGHER GUN CONTROL LAWS DO NOT REDUCE GUN CRIME OR CRIME.IF THEY DID, THEN CHICAGO WOULD BE GUN CRIME FREE AND DC'S GUN CRIME WOULD HAVE WORSENED.

EVERY ONE HAS POSTED ON THE FACT THAT THE NYTIMES HAD TO ISSUE AN OFFICIAL CORRECTION BECAUSE THEY GOT EASTER WRONG, SAYING IT WAS THE DAY JESUS ASCENDED TO HEAVEN, (AND NOT THE DAY HE ROSE/WAS RESURRECTED).

I WANT TO POINT OUT THAT THIS SPECIFIC ERROR MADE JESUS LIKE MOHAMED (WHO MUSLIMS BELIEVE ASCENDED TO HEAVEN) - AND I AM SURE IT WAS NO ACCIDENT.

NEXT YEAR THE NYTIMES''LL PROBABLY SAY IT'S ANNIVERSARY OF THE DAY JESUS MARRIED A MALE DISCIPLE - OR DEMANDED UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE.

Rio de Janeiro: An American woman was raped by three men aboard a public van in a six-hour abduction over the weekend that began in the seaside district of Copacabana, the police said. The attackers pummeled the woman's face and tied up her male companion, a French citizen, then beat him with a metal bar as he witnessed the harrowing assault. The couple were forced to use bank cards to withdraw money from their accounts before the assailants finally freed them at a bus station on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

The assault stunned many in Brazil, especially as Rio tries to promote itself as a city on the mend and prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games. "Everyone should be shocked by this horrendous crime," said Aparecida Goncalves, the head of Brazil's national office for combating violence against women. She said that reports of gang rape remained relatively rare in Rio and other parts of Brazil, but that cases of rape on public transportation including buses and subway cars remained a pressing issue in some large cities.

BRAZIL, AND THE MUCH OF SOUTH AMERICA, ARE HELL-HOLES OF SOCIALIST ATHEISTIC HEDONISM. AND POVERTY.

WHEN "DO WHAT THOU WILT IS THE WHOLE OF THE LAW" AND WHEN PEOPLE DO WHAT IS RIGHT IN THEIR OWN EYES, THEN EVIL REIGNS.

THE GUARDIAN: Unemployment across the 17 EU countries that use the euro has hit 12% for the first time since the currency was launched in 1999. Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said the rate in February was unchanged and at the record high after January's figure was revised up from 11.9% to 12%. Over the month, 33,000 people in the eurozone joined the ranks of the unemployed. Spain and Greece continued to suffer from unemployment rates above 26%, and many other countries saw their figures increase to uncomfortable levels.

AS EUROPE DECLINES UNDER THE WEIGHT OF UN-AFFORDABLE WELFARE AND IDIOTIC SOCIALISTIC/UTOPIANISTIC SCHEMES, OBAMA IS TRYING TO TURN US INTO EUROPE.

IT WILL WORK HERE AS WELL AS IT WORKS IN EUROPE. AND AS WELL AS IN ZIMBABWE AND CUBA AND NORTH KOREA AND THE USSR.

REMINDER: EUROPE NEVER HAD ANY "BUSH TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH: OR "2 UNFUNDED WARS" OR "GOP DEREGULATING FOR THE BIG CORPORATIONS".

WHAT IS DRIVING EUROPE INTO THE GROUND IS SOCIALISM.

AND OBAMACARE AND THE REST OF OBAMA'S AGENDA IS HAVING THE SAME INEVITABLE EFFECTS ON US.

BBC: Emergency services in Poland are trying to clear icy roads and restore power to thousands of homes after heavy snow over Easter. Polish national radio says more than 100,000 homes had no electricity on Monday, after trees collapsed on some power lines. Poland's central and eastern provinces were worst hit. There were hundreds of domestic fires at the weekend, many caused by faulty heaters. Five people died in blazes.

Moscow also has unusually heavy snow. Russia's state weather centre says the blanket of snow in Moscow reached 65cm (25in) on Monday - that is 9cm more than previous records for 1 April, dating back to 1895 and 1942.

Monday, April 01, 2013

William Shakespeare's lesser known role as an illegal food hoarder 400 years ago helps us understand him as a more complex figure, says new research. As well as hoarding during food shortages, the Aberystwyth University study said the bard was also threatened with jail for tax evasion. They looked at how food and hunger were reflected in Shakespeare's writing. His play Coriolanus shows a famine created and exploited by rich merchants and politicians. It was written at the height of the 1607 food riots.

Legislation that would award the injured from the 2009 Fort Hood shooting the Purple Heart would adversely affect the trial of Maj. Nidal Hasan by labeling the attack terrorism, according to a Defense Department document obtained by Fox News.

The document comes following calls from survivors and their families for the military honor, because they say Fort Hood was turned into a battlefield when Hasan opened fire during the November 2009 attack. Fox News is told that the DOD “position paper” is being circulated specifically in response to the proposed legislation.

The document reads in part:

“Passage of this legislation could directly and indirectly influence potential court-martial panel members, witnesses, or the chain of command, all of whom exercise a critical role under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Defense counsel will argue that Major Hasan cannot receive a fair trial because a branch of government has indirectly declared that Major Hasan is a terrorist — that he is criminally culpable.”

A source with knowledge of the position paper told Fox News that DOD is putting on a full-court press by sending senior officials, including generals, to meet with lawmakers in an effort to block support.

This is pathetic. Since when did that filth deserve a "fair" trial to begin with? This is just an excuse to avoid acknowledging the reasons and motivations he had for conducting jihad at the base.

Three years after the White House arranged a hero's welcome at the State of the Union address for the Fort Hood police sergeant and her partner who stopped the deadly shooting there, Kimberly Munley says President Obama broke the promise he made to her that the victims would be well taken care of.

"Betrayed is a good word," former Sgt. Munley told ABC News in a tearful interview to be broadcast tonight on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline."

"Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," she said. "In fact they've been neglected." [...]

Munley and dozens of other victims have now filed a lawsuit against the military alleging the "workplace violence" designation means the Fort Hood victims are receiving lower priority access to medical care as veterans, and a loss of financial benefits available to those who injuries are classified as "combat related."

That the victims have not received any proper care from their employer is one of the most shocking things about this tragedy.

Neal Sher, the New York-based lawyer for the Fort Hood victims, called the Army's claims 'rubbish.'

"This is a cynical travesty," Sher said. "The only thing the government has done is guarantee that anything done to help the victims will effectively impair and prevent Hasan's prosecution. These victims have been given the back of the hand by their government."

Those army officials who've willingly gone along with the shunning of the victims should be ashamed of themselves and do not deserve their ranks or jobs.

MUMBAI: Mumbai Police has kicked up a controversy following its circular which says the women's wing of an Islamic organization is "brainwashing and training girls for jihad". The outfit has threatened legal action if no apology is tendered by the police.

The "internal circular" said the Girls Islamic Organization (GIO) of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, one of the country's largest Islamic organizations that runs 40 high schools and three junior colleges in Maharashtra, has been operating with the objective of "brainwashing college and school girls and train them for jihad".

"The group GIO is related to Jamaat-e-Islami Hind and it was established in Kerala. The purported aim of this organization is to make more and more Muslim women aware of their religion and the holy Quran. But the real objective of this organization is to brainwash school and college girls and train them for jihad," the circular, issued last month, says.

The document, meant for internal circulation, got leaked and has invited the wrath of Jamaat with its Maharashtra spokesman Mohammad Aslam Ghazi threatening to sue the police department if it does not apologise.

So rather than offer proof that they're not seeking to corrupt their students, they seek to silence the police on the issue. That aside, the sad reality is that they are trying to make their students aware of "their" religion and the Koran - that is, the jihad verses it contains. The police should not be cowed by these creeps, but unfortunately, that's just what might happen.

Climate change is expanding Antarctica's sea ice, according to a scientific study in the journal Nature Geoscience. The paradoxical phenomenon is thought to be caused by relatively cold plumes of fresh water derived from melting beneath the Antarctic ice shelves. This melt water has a relatively low density, so it accumulates in the top layer of the ocean. The cool surface waters then re-freeze more easily during Autumn and Winter.

This explains the observed peak in sea ice during these seasons, a team from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) in De Bilt says in its peer-reviewed paper. Climate scientists have been intrigued by observations that Antarctic sea ice shows a small but statistically significant expansion of about 1.9% per decade since 1985, while sea ice in the Arctic has been shrinking over past decades.

"This is caused by melting of the ice sheets from below," he told the Reuters news agency. But there are other plausible explanations for Antarctic sea-ice expansion. Paul Holland of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) stuck to his findings last year that a shift in winds linked to climate change was blowing ice away from the coast, allowing exposed water in some areas to freeze and make yet more ice.

"The possibility remains that the real increase is the sum of wind-driven and melt water-driven effects, of course. That would be my best guess, with the melt water effect being the smaller of the two," he told the London Science Media Centre.

SO.... ER UM... ACCORDING TO THE ALARMISTS.... THE WARMING IS CAUSING MORE FREEZING!?!?SHEESH.THE ALARMISTS WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING EXCEPT THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS NATURAL AND CLIMATE WARMING NOT HAPPENING FOR THE LAST 15-20 YEARS.THEY ARE SO FULL OF SH*T THEY ARE NO LONGER RATIONAL.THEIR FAITH IN AGW IS UNFALSIFIABLE.AND THI PROVES IT'S BULLSH*T.HERE'S THE TRUTH:

Sunday, March 31, 2013

PARIS, MARCH 25 - The Islamic veil is still very much a national controversy, data from a front-page BVA survey in Le Parisien newspaper showed on Monday.

More than 80% of respondents favor toughening the country's 2004 law, which bans religious dress and insignia in schools, nurseries, and anywhere that involves the care and education of children. Another 83% is in favor of extending the ban to the private sector, and 16% is against.

Socialists, intellectuals, politicians and humanitarian NGOs signed an online petition launched by Marianne weekly, calling on the government to enact a new, tougher law in defense of secularism, one that will explain with ''pedagogy and clarity'' where and when the principle of secularism is to be applied.

Prominent signatories include philosophers Elisabeth Badinter, Alain Finkielkraut and Jean-Pierre Le Goff, Socialist Party secretary Harlem Desir, and several former ministers. For influential think tank Institut Montaigne, the existing law does not need reforming. The debate flared when France's highest court on March 19 vacated the dismissal of a woman from a Chateloup-les-Vignes private nursery school for refusing to remove her Islamic veil in the workplace. School authorities cited the principle of secularism and the school's ''philosophical, political and sectarian neutrality'', but the Supreme Court replied that since secularism does not apply in the private sector, the dismissal ''constitutes in this case an act of discrimination on grounds of religion''. Interior Minister Manuel Valls hotly criticized the ruling, which he said ''brings secularism into question''. Since 2004, French law bans ostentatious wear of all ''religious insignia'' in public schools. A law banning women from wearing the full-body Islamic veil (burqa and niqab) in all public places, including the street, was enacted in 2011. Women defying the ban risk fines of 150 euros.

It's not just the enforcement in itself, it's also having the right kind of police on duty to deal with it. If there's other Muslims around who might "aid their comrade" by causing violence, then they need more recruits to handle it.

It's amazing to see that even members of the Socialist party are willing to get behind the demand for better protection of private businesses.

Natural gas from the Tamar field off Israel's Mediterranean shores began flowing on Saturday, the head of a partner in the field said in a statement.

Israel, once energy poor, is expected to become a gas exporter by the end of the decade, with the Tamar field holding enough reserves to meet the country's gas needs for decades.

The gas discovery in 2009 led to an exploration frenzy in the Levant Basin - shared between Israel, Cyprus and Lebanon - and the uncovering of a second bigger find, Leviathan, which prompted Israel to set up a natural gas wealth fund.

"Today (we begin) independence in Israeli natural gas. It is an enormous achievement for the Israeli economy and the start of a new era," said billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva, the controlling shareholder in Delek Group, one of the partners in Tamar.

The gas should lead to a reduction in production costs for state utility Israel Electric Corp as well as a decline in the price of electricity, the Water and Energy Ministry said last week.

It may not be immediately, but in a couple years, the business of natural gas development should help bring down prices tremendously and make the country more prosperous too.

Easter Sunday has been confirmed as the coldest Easter day on record, with the lowest temperature recorded as -12.5C in Braemar, in the Scottish Highlands.

The previous coldest Easter day since modern records began in 1960 was Easter Monday in 1986, which dipped to -9.8C, the Met Office said. Average temperatures for this time of year are between 10C and 13C. The prolonged cold spell covering the UK could last until mid-April, forecasters say. Easter Monday is expected to remain very cold.

If it is detrimental to the Israeli people’s basic sense of righteousness and morality, such an apology, no matter how much it seems to be in the country’s immediate political interest, inflicts long-term damage outweighing the short-term benefits.

The soldiers who risked their lives on behalf of the State of Israel on the Mavi Marmara deserve better.

The army is surely the one who suffered the biggest insult from Netanyahu's irresponsible apology, which he apparently did without even consulting the IDF before doing it.

A man in the PLO's regime has been jailed just for approving of a post critical of them:

A Palestinian man who clicked “Like” on a Facebook status criticizing a Palestinian Authority official has been sentenced to six months in prison.

Anas Ismail, 29, of Salfit, near Nablus, was found guilty of “libel and slander.”

Ismail is the second Palestinian to be imprisoned for Facebook activities in the past few days.

He was sentenced to prison on the same day another PA court in Bethlehem sentenced Palestinian journalist to one year in prison for sharing a photo on Facebook that compared PA President Mahmoud Abbas to a villain and the spy of French colonial authorities in a Syrian drama.

Why would anyone want to compare Abbas to a spy for French authorities? Obvioulsy, because of insanity and the impression that their best cronies aren't good enough for them.

This is one of the most telling examples of Orwellian thought control being conducted by the PLO, yet the MSM considers Israel the "oppressor", not the Islamists.

Barry Rubin's written about the growing anti-semitism marketed by Muslims in the Netherlands, and how even the MSM in that country is only contributing similarly to the problem with their own anti-Israelism.